Alder

100% Full combo on Through The Fire and Flames in Guitar Hero. 10+ years of casual play in the works. Getting near the end is just like being on record pace in a speedrun. I've done it twice now, but it's still nerve-wracking as ever. There are plenty of objectively harder custom songs out there that I've also done, but I was at 69/70 GH3 FCs for 8+ years so this one has always felt important. Plus there are plenty of choke-able sections near the end, like the zig-zag at 6:37:

My aunt and uncle got me Perfect Dark, it was my first FPS, and pretty violent for 9-year-old me to have crossbow bolts and throwing knives able to stick into peoples' heads. Excellent game. I also played Mortal Kombat but I don't remember any controversy surrounding it by the late 90s. I didn't like Mortal Kombat anyway and the violence seemed so over-the-top that it was basically a cartoon. I played GTA Vice City on the Xbox a few years later, still haven't jacked a car or ran over anyone in real life. Hell, I didn't even get my license until I was 23. Maybe it had the opposite effect.

I think you're right about articles that claim to list the "top 10 ____ games ever", they're bound to be subjective. Is a 5-screw metal gear more rare than an NWC, for example? I mean, maybe. The implied caveat with a lot of lists regarding rarity is whether the games were sanctioned/licensed by the platform they're on. Rare games then line up with low print runs or poor sales, like DK Jr. Math or Little Samson. Something like an NWC, demo/test cart, or prototype are bound to be more rare, but they were never available at retail so it feels weird to me to lump them in. You could make a "top 1000" list filled with prototypes and NFRs. My understanding is that with the 2600, there were a bunch of people making their own games in the 80s and 90s, burning them onto carts and selling them on a small scale. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think game dev for the 2600 was more like recording your garage band music to a cassette. You had big name third party publishers like Activision but also a lot of little guys at the bottom. Atari didn't come after them so there were plenty of "unlicensed" games released, which is why we find out about rare games like Red Sea Crossing. That puts homebrews in an interesting category, since they're pretty much just unlicensed games made way too late. If I make a game and burn it onto a single cart, is it now rare? I wouldn't say so. Maybe strictly speaking, but it's not really collectable. But if I started taking orders and sold 100 copies, then fell off the face of the planet, could my homebrew be considered a rare game in 10 years?

The part of Karl's video that shows the A+ Tomb Raider with tears in the seal really stuck with me. Why is nobody talking about that?

I did a whole minimalist playthrough of LttP back on the NA tinychat, it was lots of fun. I even waited to get the lantern until I needed it for the 2nd dungeon. I remember magic management being difficult with no 1/2 meter and no bottles.. Trinexx was an interesting fight.

Never really sleepwalked, but your title makes me think of that weird state you can be in where you're falling asleep but not quite there. The fuzzy line between conscious and unconscious. I remember in my early teens pulling all-nighters at friends' places, falling asleep, sugar/caffeine crash after a night of games - the wind-down can sometimes spark some weird creative thoughts. Steve Wozniak has a good story about that that he likes to tell in interviews.. when he was working on Super Breakout at Atari he was sleep-deprived and had an idea to cycle bits in a simple chip to simulate wavelengths of color. Ultimately that led to the Apple II producing color output for cheap, without any fancy or expensive calculations.

Oh wow, I totally missed that.. my brain saw weird black controllers and assumed they were some garbage clone controllers.

People actually buy moldy games? I really don't understand that. I might buy a moldy cart with the plan to un-mold it.. but paper? Graded? Maybe that's my own bad take, I guess..

Like I said, in my dream scenario, I'd be unwrapping everything for the sake of cataloguing sealed contents but unfortunately I'm not a multi-millionaire and I have bills to pay. If someone is willing to pay you 100x what you spent on it, I'd say it's not worth the fun. Trade it in for a new kitchen or something and call it a day

At this point, I just play whatever I find fun. If I get 40 hours into an RPG and then I get bored, I'll play something else. Even if it means I don't come back to that RPG for a year or two, or ever. Ideally I'd play everything to completion - I really enjoy seeing things through to the end. But that same completionist mindset got me to sink like 15k hours into Runescape over the years. But yeah, having fun is the most important thing. Sometimes I'll "sample" a game multiple times before I truly pick it up. I've found that as I've gotten older, I appreciate puzzle games more since I can play for a few minutes without having to really remember anything. There's usually no real ending so no reason to feel bad for lack of progress. Rhythm games scratch this itch as well. "Fun" can come in different forms, though. Playing Tetris or Guitar Hero or Mario tickles my brain in a way that is an actual, visceral entertainment experience. But, at least for me, I'd say I also have "fun" playing some garbage Wii shovelware game, just because I like playing things I haven't seen before and learning more about all the little weird games out there. Madden? Sure, pop it in - I'm not a sports fan and I don't like sports games, but if it's new to me, I want to see it. The difference is that I'm not going to play it for 10+ hours once I know that the core gameplay doesn't do it for me. I'd say the "sampling" mentality is all about finding games that fall into the first category instead of the second. But it can be an admittedly blurry line.

Twice in one comment? What a looser.

That's an awesome wall. Welcome to the site!

Do you still have the panic restaurant you opened? I would hope that's worth more than a little samson cart. But maybe not with how prices have been.

I can't speak to its effectiveness, but I read something about using blu tack as a liquid barrier. I think I'll try that with the next one I do. Basically make a little square wall out of putty around the sticker to make a "pool" to hold the solvent while it does its work on the adhesive.

@Hollywoodcaddy I went to www.gamesdatabase.org and searched for Clu Clu Land, Stack Up, and Chubby Cherub, and they all seem to have similar pictures. Those were 5-screw only games and they're all shown as 3-screw on that site. They're probably using the same cartridge image and overlaying the label art for some reason. Some of them look a bit skewed too, like how the seal on Stack Up isn't exactly a perfect circle:

M ALE Might watch it later, but a summary would also be appreciated

I'm in the process of doing the same! None of the collection trackers I've used have really felt complete for my needs. NintendoAge was nice since you could upload pictures and rate the quality of every item (and upload custom items) but the site was awfully slow and.. well it's gone now. GVN has a better interface, but less granularity. So heck it, I'd rather just make my own. I don't have anything to show for it yet, but once I do, I'll be sure to share it on VGS.

$185

I didn't get that impression from the image you shared, but I agree that Seth wasn't being respectful of his privacy when he posted the update to that article. Was it really necessary to post his full name and where he lived?

Someone needs to photoshop the sign to say "Your princess is in another castle"

As far as I can tell, they're open with COVID measures in place: https://www.nintendonyc.com

@Code Monkey looks like the Game Boy has lost some horizontal lines I wonder if they'd ever open it up to fix? Btw, have you heard the song Code Monkey by Jonathan Coulton? I think of it every time I see your name, lol.

Here are some pictures from Feb 20, 2020 (just before COVID hit, and coincidentally the day of the ACNH reveal trailer)

I was there in 2020 and it wasn't there

I remember talk about downloading the whole site and zipping it up to work offline. Does anyone know if that ever happened?